On the eve of that event the U.S. Department of Energy's FermiLab, has published information that strongly hints at the existence of the Higgs boson, but stops short of providing explicit proof of its existence.

The data comes courtesy of Tevatron, a smaller accelerator 4 miles in circumference. Located on the FermiLab grounds just east of Batavia, Ill., Tevatron was long the world's most powerful accelerator. Its tests actually wrapped up last year, before the accelerator was permanently shut down, after the U.S. decided being a world leader in scientific research was no longer among its spending priorities.

But Tevatron's last hurrah has offered a tantalize tease of what lies ahead with the LHC. Taking 10 years worth of data involving approximately 500 trillion particle collisions, the FermiLab teams offered up signs of elusive particle.

The Tevatron's greatest legacy may be in finding the first evidence of the Higgs boson.
[Source: FermiLab]

States Rob Roser a spokesman for one of the two Tevatron experiments, "Our data strongly point toward the existence of the Higgs boson. But it will take results from the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe to establish a discovery."

The Tevatron was able to determine with relative accuracy that the particle it observed was a Higgs boson. But the 1-in-550 chance that the finding was a statistical fluke (99.8 percent level of certainty) was unacceptably high in the laser-precise world of particle physics -- hence the LHC's firepower is necessary.

The Higgs boson is the only fundamental subatomic particle predicted by the Standard Model that has yet to be observed.

But it is not mere novelty that drives researchers to observe this particular particle, one must understand the Standard Model of particle physics. This pillar of physics theory predicts that the Higgs boson gives rise to the so-called Higgs mechanism, a sort of "sticky field" that coats particles like a spoon dipping through a jar of honey. This "sticky" effect is thought to give protons, neutrons, and electrons -- the building blocks of matter that most of us are familiar with -- their mass.

Unfortunately the Higgs boson needs very high beam energy and luminosity in order to be provide enough mass and conditions favorable to a Higgs boson. The Higgs boson is predicted to be less that 1.4 TeV, if the Standard Model is correct.

If the Higgs boson or similar electroweak symmetry breaking mechanism are not found to give the subatomic particles their mass, then it will be an intriguing open season for new theories. But if the Higgs boson is observed, mankind will be content in knowing that we have quantified yet another facet of reality as we know it.

Nobel Prize laureate Leon Lederman popularized the hunt for the Higgs boson in his book "The God Particle", which chronicled his work hunting for the particle at FermiLab. Professor Lederman originally intended the title to be "The Goddamn Particle" -- an expression of his frustration at the difficult observing it. The title was subsequently shortened and the phrase "God particle" stuck as a colloquialism for the complex theoretical particle.

A Nobel prize winner nicknamed the Higgs boson the "God particle", a less cheeky shortening of his longer name for it -- the "Goddamn particle". [Image Source: Gandee Vasan/Getty Images]

The latest results from his lab do little to end the frustration, but they do provide indication that a Higgs boson's mass would be between 115 and 135 GeV -- about 130 times the mass of the proton.

Now all that remains is to see what exactly the LHC has gleaned within that band of energies.

Was the Tevatron's blip, unlikely as it may be, a mere stastical fluctuation, or was it the first observation of the God particle? The data from the LHC should offer evidence towards which possibility is true.

quote: Our money flows out of our hands like a raging torrent into other Countries pockets.

Fixed.

It doesn't help when your government spent trillions? Bailing out failing companies when that money could have been used to create more jobs via the creation of new or upgraded infrastructure like new Roads, Power Plants, heck give everyone fiber internet for that much, the Aussies for instance are doing it for 43 billion...

The Aussies also have the great, stupid internet filter. Sorry, I don't want that kind of censorship in our nation and our Citizens should be willing to fight to the death over it. Should. Most aren't. They're too busy watching primetime television sucking on garbage while the electrons rule their lives.

Roads, Power Plants and Fiber internet wouldn't have solved anything. Roads would have put people to work temporarily so they could piss their earned money into what? More "stuff" that was made from overseas--so the end benefactor would once again be foreign nations.

Power Plants would never make any real progress due to all the tree hugging hippies pissing an moaning about the environmental impact in some area they don't even live in, have no relatives in and zero attachment to other than their philosophical lunacy.

Fiber Internet would ultimately stifle all productivity. People would take that free fiber internet and... download more porn on it. They'd also take a sliver of their money and buy more hard drives--the cheap kinds... made overseas. They have to save all that precious porn. It isn't like the internet is flooded with it or anything.

So no, none of those solutions would have solved much. It would have lead to people being as poor as they were before, a little bit fatter and a little bit less likely to develop prostate cancer... sooner. ;)

Hmm it seems I'm partially mistaken, I apologize. It hasn't passed... yet. However, the Australian Communications and Media Authority does maintain and have the ability to blacklist sites for the country it deems inappropriate--correct me if I'm wrong.

Since the US functions using borrowed money, in reality that flow isn't actually directed as much outwards as it is inwards... ;)

Your oversized military, warmongering demagogue politicians and badly designed social infrastructure is is what's truly hampering you guys. As an example of the latter, the reliance on vampiric insurance companies to fund health care in your country for example is causing said health care to cost around 2x more than anywhere else in the western world for similar level of treatment.

If you people weren't so paranoidly afraid of the word "social", and like pretty much ALL of Europe instituted socially funded health care (like you already do with police, courts, military and so on), costs would plummet and productivity and quality of life throughout society would rise when everyone can seek treatment for their problems rather than get crippled by them.

Point is, europe is as socialist as China is Communist. While there are still some elements left over, as far as markets are concirned it's pretty much capitalism/fend for yourself.

Why it's going wrong in the US is because the US is as capitalist as china is communist. In reality, it's the US who's the more socialist country.

Remember: socialism is nothing more then the equalizing the of 99% and setting up the power structure for the 1%, in order to bring in communism which shaves off another 0.9%, which would be the inner party/state. The redistribution of wealth.

Socialism is primarily about redistributing wealth and equality of outcomes, no matter what, and state control of capital. Public roads, police, military; those are all basic functions of state that even many libertarians would agree to.. after a little arguing over the wisdom of public roads/infrastructure (there's ways of introducing private sector involvement there asides from tolls).

The only real point you made, despite accusing someone else of "stupid talking points," was public schools. Look at what teacher unions generally do, look at the state of our public schools (where we spend the most of any country and get Washington DC schools as a result), and tell me that its an unambiguous 'win' for us there. There's a strong argument for a voucher-based privatized school system and regulated with minimum educational outcome requirements.

Socialism is also about keeping that damn 1% restricted to opening their mouths. In the US, they are also allowed to open their wallets and politicians are not put under severe restrictions as to the amount, source and conditions placed on any funding they receive directly or indirectly (indirectly being those disgusting SuperPacs that can be anonymously setup).

Comparing European Socialism to anything like communism is ridiculous. Communism is anathema to any and all democracies.

The reason we spend more is because the European nations force our companies to give them huge discounts on drugs and supplies--and in turn, our companies pass those costs on to our citizens through increased prices and rates.

We are indirectly subsidizing Europe's false security.

It doesn't matter, though, as the EU is going to implode soon enough anyways. The Europeans brag about how we subsist on debt, yet every single day more and more debt is being cranked out to feed a system over there doomed to fail.

The one thing Europe is doing right is CERN. Thank goodness for that, too. The American lust for material things and money is sickening to say the least and we could learn from Europeans on that.

Insurance companies don't provide the healthcare, they provide a financial service based around risk assessment. It doesn't cost thousands of dollars to be treated in the emergency room because of the insurance, it's because of the healthcare system.

Healthcare costs do not go down by simply giving more people insurance, the bills are still there, only covered by public money. Costs also do not go down when money is stolen from people through a mandate which demands payment into a system regardless of participation. Costs do not go down when 26 year olds can stay on their parents' plans, either.

Yes we socially cover things like emergency services because they serve the community as a whole. There is no public interest with my health, it is my body and my interest.